The Director of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, Dr. Chris Melde, is leading a follow-up study of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) Program. Melde was part of the initial longitudinal evaluation of the program from 2006 to 2011, and this time he is the lead researcher.
Established in the 1990s as a proactive response to combating youth violence and gang activity, the G.R.E.A.T. program was designed to engage 6th and 7th graders through school-based curriculum taught by local law enforcement officers.
"This is a project I have always wanted to be involved in, even back in grad school when I was first involved with the project, it was something I was passionate about, to work on a project to determine the long-term implications of prevention programming on adolescent lives,” Melde said.
“As a life course criminologist, it is fascinating to me to study and understand development and change across time. I was able to be a part of this study starting in 2006 where we followed these students at the time for many years to undercover patterns of stability and change: why people change and how they change. I think from a policy perspective, from an intervention standpoint, understanding the long-range impacts of these programs is something that we don’t know a lot about yet.”
For this long-term follow-up study, a team of researchers is working with close to 4,000 adults who participated in the G.R.E.A.T. program as children between 2006 and 2011 while living in various cities across the United States.
Melde and his team of researchers include Dr. Steven Chermak, a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at MSU; Dena Carson, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice in the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in Indianapolis; Steven Wu-Chaves, a Post-Doc in the School of Criminal Justice at MSU; Amanda Witwer, a fourth-year Doctoral Student in the School of Criminal Justice at MSU; Grace Henry, a Research Specialist in the School of Criminal Justice at MSU; and a handful of other undergraduate and graduate students in MSU’s School of Criminal Justice.
These researchers are combing through Google, internet people finders, and public records to find the data they need for the study.
“We are literally combing through thousands of records and data using programs like the White Pages and such to verify the identity of who we are looking for. It is challenging and can be very time-consuming.”
Melde said that all data is confidential and individual data is not shared.
According to Melde, the follow-up study is threefold: identify any long-lasting effects of the G.R.E.A.T. program on such things as gang membership and attitudes towards law enforcement, examine the impact of positive and negative life events on the transition to adulthood, and understand whether attitudes and experiences in adolescence have lasting effects into adulthood.
Melde said “This follow-up study will help us realize the long-term impacts of investing in these prevention programs. We can use the information and data that is collected to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of these prevention programs, and we will find out if these programs need to be changed or tweaked.”
“If we find that the program works and helps to change the trajectory of life for these students who have participated in the past, then we can advocate for a bigger investment for these programs to be available in additional schools and cities.”
For more information about the G.R.E.A.T. program or the follow-up study, visit their webpage.